Media in the classroom is not synonymous with media education – 04/27/2023 – Education

The majority of teachers in Brazilian basic education, more specifically in primary and secondary education, already use media in the context of their pedagogical practices. However, few still do it with the aim of developing critical skills regarding the analysis or reflected production of media content.

This is one of the conclusions of the research “Teachers, media and information: the repertoire of professors for the practice of media education”, coordinated by Instituto Palavra Aberta and carried out in partnership with Qantas, a company specialized in quantitative studies and construction of metrics in areas such as education and technology.

With a sample of 310 teachers in the areas of languages ​​and human sciences, from all regions of the country, the survey reveals how teachers relate to information: 74.5% of them feel well informed about topics of interest to them and areas of knowledge, but only 30% of them consider themselves to be well informed on topics farther from their area of ​​expertise.

Another fact that draws attention is related to misinformation. Fake news is a topic of concern for 73% of respondents, but only 40% of them feel prepared to deal with the challenge they represent in society.

The interviewed educators demonstrate that, like other social groups, critically situating oneself in the informational ecosystem in which we are inserted is an arduous task that demands training. As much as there are curricula and educational guidelines, such as the BNCC itself, which highlight the demand for media education among students, it is also necessary to guarantee it among adults, those responsible for mediating the learning of children and adolescents.

This difficulty in dealing with misinformation and being well informed about topics beyond the “bubble” is reflected in the main pedagogical objectives that these teachers set when they adopt media in the classroom. Their desire, for the most part, is to connect curricular themes to current events, something mentioned by 97% of respondents, or to broaden the understanding of concepts related to the study of disciplines, a concern of 93% of the sample.

This means that the use of media in the classroom is more subordinated to the formal learning of curricular contents and less attentive to the development of competences focused on students’ relationship with media and information.

Despite not being small the number of teachers who use media to encourage students to freely express their opinions on a topic (91%) or even produce informative content (90%) and identify fake news and other forms of misinformation (90%) , these skills are still on the surface of the objectives of media education when compared to the goals established by teachers who already have training in the subject.

In order to compare media and informational repertoires and how they are translated into pedagogical practices based on the media, the research used a second sample: 125 teachers who graduated from training in media education at the EducaMídia Program.

These, in addition to seeking in the media a complement for curricular learning, are committed to more sophisticated pedagogical strategies, which propose the exploration of contents from varied sources, formats and languages ​​(94%), the development of skills from digital resources (92%), critical content production (91%) and knowledge about media production processes (90%).

These objectives go beyond the simple use of the media as additional didactic material and subordinated to the learning objectives of the curricular topics, since they seek to develop criticality and responsibility in relation to the media content that students produce or receive.

However, to embrace media in education with this intent, more teachers must be guaranteed the right to be media-educated. Only in this way can the media be repositioned in the context of education: from an instrument that facilitates learning to a cross-sectional object of study, essential for the integral formation of citizens in the 21st century.